It’s hard to imagine today, but the scope of Louisiana’s coastal land loss was once an ongoing crisis that received scant attention. Now, it seems we have an alphabet soup of agencies to address coastal restoration.
Still, the state is losing the equivalent of a football field of wetlands every 100 minutes, although the rate of coastal land loss has decreased in recent years. That’s due to a variety of factors, but we cannot overlook how much a sustained, coordinated coastal restoration effort has contributed to our progress.
Yet, we are beginning to see cracks in that unified front. Disagreements over sediment diversions and pressure to cut funding at the federal level are threatening to undo decades of hard-won progress just as we are starting to see significant results.
We urge all who care about the coast not to let discord derail us.
If it’s hard to measure how far we’ve come, Mother Nature has her own ledger: Brown pelicans returning to barrier islands. Endangered sea turtles once again spotted at the Breton National Wildlife Refuge. Hundreds of acres of restored marsh thriving. And at the Wax Lake Delta, river sediment is actually building new land, providing a living laboratory for an army of researchers studying how healthy wetlands operate.
We’ve arrived at this moment due to tireless work of coastal advocacy groups and the bipartisan efforts of our elected officials. We all owe them a debt of gratitude.
Seventy-three percent of state voters in 1989 approved a coastal restoration trust fund authored by state Sen. Ben Bagert. To fill the fund, the Breaux Act in 1990, spearheaded by Sens. John Breaux and J. Bennett Johnston, provided the first dedicated federal financing.
In the aftermath of Katrina, Gov. Kathleen Blanco was instrumental in establishing the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority to coordinate coastal protection efforts. In 2006, Sen. Mary Landrieu pushed through the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, or GOMESA, which gave Louisiana and other Gulf states a share in oil lease royalties for offshore drilling to address coastal issues.
After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, Gov. Bobby Jindal was key to getting a settlement from the oil giant BP that would direct funding to coastal restoration and protection.
We see several ways for legislators to carry forward their vision and continue to attack what is an existential threat to our way of life.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, has inserted language in the budget bill being debated in Congress that would give Louisiana a greater share of money from offshore oil drilling, money that will become critical as BP settlement funds end in 2031. We urge our state’s delegation to make sure this provision survives as the bill moves through the legislative process.
The latest annual plan from CPRA, which outlines spending on $2 billion worth of projects, has received approval from its board and now goes before the state Legislature. Lawmakers should support it so work can move forward.
As for the thorny issue of sediment diversions, we believe that experimentation with new ways of rebuilding land along the coast is the only way ultimately to figure out how to not just stem, but reverse, coastal land loss. However, we agree that as we experiment, the voices of residents and commercial interests must be at the table.
We know that coastal projects are costly, but countless benefits have already redounded to our state from these endeavors. We’re mitigating our risk from storms, and we have become leaders worldwide in coastal science and managing wetlands.
Restoring our coast was never going to be easy. But when we started this journey, we felt we owed it to future generations. That hasn’t changed. Neither should our commitment to preserving the rich land and legacy of coastal Louisiana.
